[Update] James Corden forgoes talking about Balthazar incident in favor of sounding even more annoying, restaurant responds
“I haven’t done anything wrong, on any level,” James Corden says, to which owner Keith McNally says, "Is he joking?"
Aux News Corden![[Update] James Corden forgoes talking about Balthazar incident in favor of sounding even more annoying, restaurant responds](https://img.pastemagazine.com/wp-content/avuploads/2022/10/15004338/c6cb5a36ecd70c85a78b8f60211172ae.jpg)
When a well-known, long-time restaurateur calls you “the most abusive customer” to ever patronize an establishment in its 25 years, it might do you some good to grovel, or even spare a crumb of remorse. But it seems late-night jester James Corden feels as though the whole conversation about his table manners is just a little below him.
“I haven’t done anything wrong, on any level,” he tells The New York Times. “So why would I ever cancel this? I was there. I get it. I feel so Zen about the whole thing. Because I think it’s so silly. I just think it’s beneath all of us. It’s beneath you.”
It seems Corden’s opted to take the high road—sorry—the high and mighty road, to cast his eyes down upon people who think treating service workers like shit is detestable. He’d instead rather put on the hater blockers, deny deny deny, and talk about his new series “Mammals,” in which he plays a Michelin star chef, which can only be characterized as laughable after all *widely gestures* this.
“It’s strange. It’s strange when you were there,” Corden says on the subject. “I think I’m probably going to have to talk about it on Monday’s show. My feeling, often, is, never explain, never complain. But I’ll probably have to talk about it.”
He doesn’t seem to internalize this personal mantra of “never complain” too much, as indicative of his reported behavior at Balthazar, but certainly feels compelled to “never explain,” especially when it comes to what the hell an egg yolk omelet is.
Corden then takes a strange moment to remind everyone that Twitter is not necessarily reflective of the real world, and in this augmented reality, “Hillary Clinton is the president of the United States.”
“Should we not all be a little grown-up about this?” he says. “I promise you, ask around this restaurant. They don’t know about this. Maybe 15 percent of people. I’ve been here, been walking around New York, not one person’s come up to me. We’re dealing in two worlds here.”
In response, Balthazar’s owner Keith McNally says this:
I’ve no wish to kick a man when he’s down. Especially one who’s worth $100 Million, but when James Corden said in yesterday’s NY Times that he hadn’t done “anything wrong, on any level,” was he joking? Or was he denying being abusive to my servers? Whatever Corden meant, his implication was clear: he didn’t do it. Although I didn’t witness the incident, lots of my restaurant’s floor staff did. They had nothing to gain by lying. Corden did.
I wish James Corden would live up to his Almighty initials and come clean. If the supremely talented actor wants to retrieve the respect he had from all his fans (all 4 of them) before this incident, then he should at least admit he did wrong. If he goes one step further and apologizes to the 2 servers he insulted, I’ll let him eat for free at Balthazar for the next 10 years.
Your move Corden.
8 Comments
James Corden is the worst aspects of every try-hard theatre kid I ever met, rolled into one body.
Emphasis on “rolled.”
Making a fat joke in 2022, your friends are proud of you!
I always just thought of him as Glastonbury flotsam.
Quarter century in restaurants, front of the house and kitchen. Rudeness to the servers is not uncommon. And in many cases, not taken seriously. People have all sorts of stress in their lives, and it’s impossible to account for all the things that might set off a reaction. It happens, and it’s dealt with as a matter of course. Sorry, sir or ma’am. Your server told me about the issue. I will, of course, take the charge off your bill, and if you would like it re-done, I will speak with the cooks to insure it is done properly. Again, apologies, and here are a couple of refills for your drinks, on me. The house eats a relatively minor cost, the customer is satisfied, life rolls merrily along. But there is a point where rudeness steps up to abuse. Where someone starts taking out all of their festering frustrations on the staff. And that is_never_ to be tolerated. Regardless of wealth, status, what have you. The telling thing, for me, is how Corden is reacting to having been called out on it. In most cases, the guest, once they’ve had a chance to calm down and think the moment through, apologizes. As appalled by their behavior as we were. It’s only the true assholes who try to reassign blame, double down, etc.
The bizarre thing is that he *did* apparently apologize, but then 24 hours later he decides the smart thing is to change tack to the “I did nothing wrong, I’m too zen for that” approach.
We had a guy tell the front desk agent at our hotel that she was a piece of shit because nobody put hypoallergenic pillows in his room like he’d requested. She told him it would take about ten minutes and he was like, “But I need to go to sleep NOW!!” He was absolutely furious, screaming and berating her. She ended up in tears. Unfortunately, no manager was aware of this at the time because it was pretty late in the evening, so there wasn’t anyone to back her up. The next day his assistant called the hotel and let us know that they’d forgotten to pass the request on to us in the first place. If they hadn’t told us that we probably would have comped a night for the asshole, which is ridiculous. He never apologized or even acknowledged that it wasn’t our fault. That front desk agent quit not long afterwards.
Makes me wonder what happened to the assistant who admitted the error.
Thank God we had an update on that situation.I’ve not been sleeping well when I read the news.Now I will be fine finally.Sincerely, me